


Day Drinking

by Quoth_the_Raven_Nevermore_Nevermore



Series: Five Things Steve Learned [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Pre-Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 00:17:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4585713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quoth_the_Raven_Nevermore_Nevermore/pseuds/Quoth_the_Raven_Nevermore_Nevermore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They sit like that for some time, just two orphaned boys who still wished they could drape themselves all up in their mother’s skirts and hide away from the world. Who wished they could hear a laugh that they knew down to their bone’s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day Drinking

Steve knows what time Tony went to bed last night.

Which he knows sounds weird, but it’s the truth. Tony had gone to bed at exactly two AM, Steve knows this because he fell asleep with the genius leaning against his side while they watched The Wizard of Oz, mumbling something about peanut butter and drooling against Steve’s shirt.  
It was – and Tony would kill him if he knew anyone was describing him like this – adorable.

After the movie had ended and Tony was still dead to the world Steve had manhandled the now snoring man from the living room, into the elevator, and up to his bed before leaving to fall asleep in his own. Which, okay, shouldn’t have been such a struggle.

So logically, Tony should not be up right now. He should be in bed. Asleep. Until at least noon.  
However, Tony was not asleep, he was up and dressed in an expensive looking suit drinking coffee, at six am. Hell, in the year and a half he’d been living in the tower Steve doesn’t think he’s ever seen Tony up before at least eight when he actually slept.

“What are you doing up?”

Tony looks up, and his eyes are distant, brown and hazy, “hmmm?”

Steve sighs in fond amusement.

“I know what time you fell asleep. What are you doing up this early.”

Tony sighs, “Wasn’t really tired when I woke up. Why stay in bed?”

That was an – an odd answer. Despite being a workaholic to the tenth degree Tony loved languishing in bed, it was a running joke that once you got Tony into bed he was never leaving it. But – he’d even admit it – he’d been very overprotective of Tony since the entire I’m-a-dumb-idiot-who-didn’t-think-to-tell-anyone-that-I’m-in-massive-amounts-of-pain-because-of-the-metal-in-my-chest-because-again-I’m-an-idiot incident. Tony not being tired wasn’t a cause for alarm.

Yet, anyway.

“Any plans for the day?” he asks the dark haired man.

“Yes.”

“Oh, what are you doing?”

Tony looks at him, his lips turned down and his eyes more alert now, “i have a press release about the new StarkPhone in an hour. Then armor upgrades and working on those widow bites that Nat keeps bugging me for.”

Steve nods.

“I saw that the suit was lagging on the right side after the hit you took the other day. You still didn’t finish those? I’m surprised she hasn’t locked you in your lab until they’re finished.”

Tony nods, “SI has kept me busy lately with the new StarkPhone coming out and the problems with the intelli-crops not surviving the blight. The stocks are plummeting because of that one and Pepper wants it fixed as quick as possible. i’m hard pressed to disagree with her to be honest,” Tony takes a deep sip of his coffee. “Natasha understands but she’s getting antsy. Last mission they weren’t working right.”

Steve nods, and grabs his water bottle from the fridge.

“i’ll leave you to it then.”

* * *

 

Hours later Steve couldn’t find Tony anywhere. He’d checked the lab, the office, Bruce’s lab, and any other place he could think of. He’d even checked Tony’s floor and bedroom in the off chance that the man had decided to get some more sleep. It’s ultimately the sound of distant piano music that both distracts him from his search and ends it.

He finds Tony in what amounts to the tower attic. Which wasn’t so much an attic as a room at the top of the tower with an impressive skylight that was made out of one-way glass. He was seated at an old piano, his body immersed in a beam of soft afternoon sunlight, the beam shining upon his dark hair which was for once unstyled.

He was in the same suite from this morning which probably meant no work actually got done on the armor and Nat’s widow bites. A half empty bottle of wine and a glass were on the floor next to him. Normally he’d be worried by the fact that Tony was drinking at two in the afternoon, and he was, but at the moment he was captivated.

He was fairly sure he was staring.

Tony’s fingers danced nimbly across the keys, his eyes closed tightly in what looked to be pain, and his lips twisted into a bitter smile. He played – he played beautifully, and before Steve he painted a story of loss and love, all without words.

There was sheet music in front of him, old and yellowed, the corners curling inward like a flower too long without water, the soft petals now brittle and breakable. It was quite obviously handwritten, and Tony very clearly knew it by heart, he didn’t once glance at the pages in front of him.

Steve was still an artist at heart, and he could so vividly see what was being said without words. Fleeting images danced through his head, the sound was heavy, not oppressively so, but… still heavy.

There was a woman, because it had to have been composed by a woman, and she was so happy, and then – then it all fell to pieces around her, like a fragile vase. But she was still so full of love that she couldn’t leave.The haunting song sped up, painting a hurried dash to the finish line with the grace that must have permeated the woman’s life before, and then, with a final high note that made Steve think of cliffs, endless blue water, and loss, it was over.

Just like that there was silence, and Tony was turning towards him, his face entirely too open and sad for Steve’s liking.

“Tony….I-I don’t, you play beautifully.”

“My mother taught me.”

Steve so rarely hears Tony talk about his mother, passing references to how much she loved helping people during keynote speeches at The Maria Stark Foundation dinners, but never about something like this, about something he learned from her. It was never something that you couldn’t gain from old newspaper clippings.

“Did she write that?”

Tony nods.

“I – yes. About dad. And me.”

Oh, Steve thinks.

This probably spoke more about Tony’s childhood than anything else. This was not a happy song. It was a song of love, yes, but there is such utter loss there too. Such complete sadness. It was like a cage bird that loved its master but never quite stopped longing for the wild.

Which part, he wondered, had been about Tony? Which about Howard? Or was it more complicated. A song for two men that were her world?

“She – ah, she really must have been talented. To write that.”

Tony smiles a little, the corners of his mouth turning upwards briefly as he let out a soft huff before they fell.

“She was.”

“You don’t – you don’t talk about her much.”

Tony sighs and stands, bending until his back cracked. He paces a step, and then slides down to sit on a white cardboard box, landing in an undignified slouch, limbs loose with the alcohol although he didn’t appear to be anywhere near drunk. With a role of his eyes at Steve’s indecisiveness of what to do he motions for Steve to join him.

So, Steve does, collapsing down against the wall, in such a way that put his head on level with Tony’s lap.

“I don’t, do I?”

Steve flounders for a moment, “ah, what was she like?”

Tony pierces his lips.

“Good. She was good. She was a first generation immigrant and caught Dad’s eye at one of his Expo’s. She too young to be saddled with a husband twice her age and an infant though. It wore on her, I think. She tried so hard though, even when the wine had ahold of her.”

Tony paused his head lolling against the wall.

“ My first language was Italian because that was how she talked to me. Dad hated it but there was nothing he could do about it,” Tony paused age old dark humor darkened his visage. “When I was twelve, she wanted to take me to Italy to see her parents. Dad refused. she yelled. That was the first time I saw him hit her. He apologized but Mom never looked at him the same, which, i think, only made him angrier and made him work more.”

He paused, and Steve was reminded why Steve didn’t think of Howard Stark with the same regard as he once did. Tony shook his head as if to physically shake himself from his memories before he continued hesitantly.

“She used to make Cannoli’s in the middle of the night, because we both had a sweet tooth a mile wide. When she gave the cooks the day off she always made one of three things. She either made Ribollita which was disgusting, Risotto, which i always liked or bolognese spaghetti which was to die for.”

Steve nods. Thinks of his own fiercely Irish mother who had been proud of her roots when others would spit on her for them, and understands. After all, he still has fond memories of Soda Bread and Coddle.

“She’d take me to mass every Sunday, rain or shine, hell or high water. Always wore a golden cross around her neck despite how much dad would argue with her about it. She taught me to play piano, to pray, and every little bit of street smarts she knew.”

Tony’s smile is fond and a bit sad, and Steve knows what it’s like to lose a mother. To be ill and to want nothing more than for her hand to smooth your hair away from your eyes. To miss the feel of her embrace, and to hear phantom laughter in the air.

“She called me il mio bel ragazzo, and mio principe. She wasn’t prepared to be a mother at twenty but she did the best she could and she loved me unconditionally. Io l'amavo troppo. She had her own demons, but she was a good mother.”

  
He paused then, brushing hair away from his face and smiling in remembrance, he says, “she was – yeah, she was good. The best, actually.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. Truly. How do you respond to something so intricately personal? However it was clear by the way Tony’s face was shutting down that he was taking the silence as a bad thing, which would never end well.

“My Ma,” Steve says, finally. “Raised me alone. I knew I was just a burden, that she could barely afford to feed and clothe herself on her salary, let alone a sickly kid, but she never made me feel like there was something wrong with me, she loved me unconditionally. She was only thirty three when she died, it was – yeah it was too soon.”

“Yeah,” Tony says softly. “I know the feeling. She was only thirty-seven when she died, do you know she would be sixty two today?”

“Oh, Tony,” he says before falling silent.

They sit like that for some time, just two orphaned boys who still wished they could drape themselves all up in their mother’s skirts and hide away from the world. Who wished they could hear a laugh that they knew down to their bone’s.

“I’d have loved to meet her, Tony.”

“Yeah, she would have loved you. I would have liked to meet yours, if for nothing else than to hear what trouble you got up to.”

Steve laughed softly, “Yes well, I’ve heard the ones Rhodes tells about you, so I’m sure you’ll top whatever trouble I did, or did not, get into.”

“I don’t know, didn’t you go try to beat people up in alleyways?”

Steve chuckles, finding it hard to take offense when Tony’s smiling like that, soft and sweet, showing rarely seen dimples, dark hair falling into his eyes, piano hands folded upon the tops of his knees, there was a lingering sadness in his eyes, but there was happiness there too.

No more cliff top songs, god knows it scared him to think of how many times he could have lost Tony before he even had him. That while he’d been frozen in ice, this gorgeously profound man could have been taking his last breathe in a dusty cave, losing the fight and never bursting from the ashes. Or how many times he could have lost him to his own demons. The monsters that live in his head.

He leaned his head up against Tony’s thigh, and they sat there, drinking up the late afternoon sunshine and the warmth that came with each other’s company.


End file.
